the final word
The Final Word
Own Your Own Trades Taking Responsibility for Your Actions By Adrian Kempton-Cumber
We live in an age where nothing is seemingly anyone’s fault any more. With the exception of meteorites and suchlike, that is just nonsense. “Have you had an accident at work that wasn’t your fault?” Well, legally must be someone’s fault, and if the lawyers can work out who, you’ll get paid. Boiling hot coffee is MacDonald’s fault, apparently. The financial crisis was the fault of somebody. Actually, here in the UK it was the regulator (the FSA) and the failure of government. So, whose fault is it when you have an investment that doesn’t work? It’s yours. Assuming no one held a gun to your head (which I’m saying is highly unlikely), then it’s yours. I think there’s a general cognitive dissonance between when people make money on an investment tip, and when they lose on one. This can be illustrated by examining a simple language exercise: You get a good stock tip: “I made money on my shrewd investment decision. Aren’t I clever!” You get a bad stock tip: “They gave me a bad investment advice. Poxy morons!”
It’s the same scenario, but when the investment starts to go one way or the other, the fact that someone else came up with it seems to mean people will claim ownership themselves when it works, probably without even acknowledging the real ‘hero’ who actually did the work, but if it fails the investor will completely disown the decision process and claim they were duped, misled, given bad advice, etc. It’s pathetic. Similarly, there’s a cognitive dissonance issue when it comes to the ability to make investment decisions. Most people seem to think that because they already have a job that requires some level
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of qualification – although presumably they wouldn’t expect to be able to pilot the Space Shuttle without further training – for some reason they imagine investing can’t be that hard, and they’d certainly be well equipped to do it.
“there’s a general cognitive dissonance between when people make money on an investment tip, and when they lose on one.”